


Multiple Choices

by applegnat



Category: The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-30
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-05 11:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applegnat/pseuds/applegnat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aged Priam, outliver-of-sons, ransoms the body of Hector.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Multiple Choices

**Author's Note:**

> Written in March 2006 for the LJ comm **cues**, for the prompt 'the things you do when you have to do.'

A moderately famous rock song poses the following three questions to listeners: a) Have you come here for forgiveness? b) Have you come to raise the dead? c) Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head? They are bitter and complex questions, ambiguated by the lack of conclusive evidence about the exact location of _here_, the identity of the possibly dead, and why the sudden intrusion of religious symbolism. In the gloom of the night of the Orient, the ghosts of the Trojan War clutching at his ankles as the sand whispers along before his feet, brought up short by this poignant questionnaire, aged Priam, outliver-of-sons, king of Asia Minor, fifty-eight times _Virgin and Warrior_'s Sexiest Man Alive in his glorious youth, might answer a) No b) Can't say and c) I don't know a Jesus. Barely scratching the surface, perhaps, of an agony and despair incomprehensible to anyone who has not been the abetter of Paris, a king whose gods have deserted him, a man who lost his chance to tell his son how much he loved him, and how right he was, after all, and that he is sorry, sorry, sorry.

There is a tendency among their people, encouraged by Priam himself, to treat death as a worthy gift in battle, provided it falls the right way, across your shoulders – just so, driving you down, knees together and spear buried deep in the belly of an enemy, instead of _so_, sprawling, naked, spit upon by the alive and hated. And yet the running around, the jerking, gored limbs, the dragging-by-ankle, none of these have registered in the mind of aged Priam alongside the overwhelming knowledge that Hector is now only a memory, the pure certainty of him replaced by a well of deep, confusing loss. Gods exact the price of believing in a human being, when only the gods really, truly exist. Hector has come and gone, but the gods are still watching. He can see their silver eyes gleam in the darkness of the tent ahead, and they are filled with nothing, no joy or madness; only the knowledge of the inevitable.

Then he realises that it is Achilles and not the gods.

Can Priam be here for forgiveness? Someone has to apologise for the mistake of Patroklos. Someone has to forgive the heinous fate of Hector (all the Hectors that are even now fading in the weakened and struggling memory of old Priam).

Who will make these gestures?

Who will raise the dead?

What difference will it make if they came back, when the living have already been injured beyond relief?

Who asks questions like these, damnit, when the greatest task in the world awaits resolution?

So. Here is Achilles, estimated by the populace so far as a pretty face and a dab hand at murder. Here is the man who was too much for Hector, here is a man not long for this world, here is godlike Peleides, looking as though drowning would be an improvement on his current quality of life, as Priam crawls into his tent, less a king (for which office Achilles has expressed a general disrespect in the past) and more an animated corpse (within his field of interests, re: Penthesilea, Patroklos, Hector tamer of horses etc.).

The lithe young body like a spear of Pelian ash uncurls to acknowledge him, but the eyes remain blank, the fire spent, leaving old Priam a clear view of the ceaseless, contrary-flowing rivers of Hades in their grey depths.

"I've come for Hector."

"I know."

Achilles, vexer of Priam and Sons, shifts restlessly, a pale ghost of gods and men. "I know who you are." The reaction that stirs in Priam's withered breast is almost human: _Dear heavens, so young._

"And do you know what you must do?" His speech is prepared, sluggish respectable notions about fathers and sons and the mercy of might, just in case.

"He'll be returned."

And after that they sit down to dinner, like gangsters cautious to eat together to avoid poisoning, like long-lost relatives fulfilling obligations, men who can eat with enemies because it is a last meal of sorts. Priam's survey asks, a) Is it getting better? b) Do you feel the same? c) Does it make it easier on you, now you got someone to blame?

And the sands of Troy susurrate: a) No b) Can't say and c) I've _got_ nothing but dead men on my hands, that's what I've _got_.


End file.
